


The Clytemnestriad

by historiareiss



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22410445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiareiss/pseuds/historiareiss
Summary: Daughter, sister, wife, mother, lover, murderess. This tells the story of Clytemnestra, the queen who wielded an axe against her husband before it was cool.
Relationships: Aegisthus/Clytemnestra (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Agamemnon/Clytemnestra (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Castor/Pollux (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Clytemnestra & Helen of Troy & Penelope (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Leda/Zeus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Kudos: 10





	1. νεολαία

The first thing I saw when I was born, was not the tearing of my mother's flesh, her white thighs stained by our mixed blood, but the cracking of an egg.

The singularity of my birth sparked much gossip and interest in Sparta. Just imagine my mother, Leda, the beautiful queen of Sparta, wife to king Tyndareus, laying perfect white eggs, much like a hen, and not a woman. My birth was indeed singular, but not single. I was the second born of two sets of twins. My twin brother, the one I shared the egg with, was Castor, whilst in the other one were Helen and Polydeuces.

Even the most naive reader would know that we weren't actually Tyndareus' children. Not all of us, at least. Helen and Polydeuces had been fathered by none other than Zeus himself under the guise of a swan, and for this they'd been blessed with beauty and talents far beyond human comprehension.

The idea of my mother mating with a bird has never held any appeal over me, and I don't know why everybody kept praising her for letting herself be seduced by a beast. Even her cuckold husband, my father, kept doting on her afterwards, and acknowledged us all as his true-born children without so much as a fret.

He knew the price of beauty, my mother would say, when I was young and out-spoken enough to voice my indignation towards his passive acceptance.

“You know, Clytemnestra,” she would say to me, “beauty is not of this world. And what the gods have given us, the gods can take whenever they wish.”

She probably meant that Tyndareus had been blessed by the gods with such a beautiful wife, and thus, by accepting such a gift, he submitted himself to the ordeal of never knowing when the gods could claim back the gift they had temporarily entrusted to him. She just wanted me to be less hard on my father, whom she pitied and tolerated better than most.

She wasn't exactly humble, my mother, nor did she look like a victim, despite the melancholic tune that the legends would adopt afterwards. Years later those words she said to me came back to my mind very often, considering how costly a price we all had to pay for the beauty of my changeable sister.

I, for one, was not beautiful. Nobody would ever say that about me, even in my youth, unless they wanted to woo me, and in that case any empty flattery would do. I knew many such, as my name suggests. I just never really cared for them.

Back to my birth, though, I had nothing divine in me. I was just a girl who was also half a bird, which meant I was an outcast for most of my green years. I felt both spite and admiration for my mother. She had been the most beautiful creature I'd ever glanced upon, up until my sister came of age and grew into a far more striking beauty than she ever was.

I definitely had no sympathy for my weak father, whose best asset was his devotion to the gods and his wife. I loved my brothers equally, for they were foolish and reckless and bright-eyed, and so alike that nobody but me could tell them apart for the longest time. For Helen I felt some sort of repulsion. Whenever she would try and come closer to me, maybe to weave together or pick flowers from the gardens of the palace, I felt the impossible urge to push her away. Something about her beauty was deeply unsettling.

I felt the divine in her and it made me sick, so I stayed away. Since she had an endless streak of suitors asking for her hand, Father had a very hard time trying to marry her off. It took him a few years to come to a decision, but when he finally did, I was the happiest, since it meant that the daughter of Zeus would finally leave our home and I would be free of the impending sense of inadequacy I felt whenever I had to measure up to her otherworldly looks.

In the end, her marriage brought me more woe than joy, but I couldn't have known that back then. It just made me giddy and shamelessly glad to be rid of her.

My mother lived up to the standards of our bloodline, and produced many children, even after the four of us. When she was nearing her forties, she gave birth to Timandra, then came Phoebe, and finally Philonoe. But they were all born after I was married off and had to join my husband in Mycenae, thus I have next to no recollections of my little sisters. I like to think that I would have loved them more than I ever loved Helen, if I knew them.

The reader will probably be wondering why I am digressing to this extent, talking about the women of my family, even those I never met. He or she will have to understand that my story starts with them, and I cannot even begin to speak about myself if I don't do them justice first.

Some say that having a sister means to have your soul split in half, and each of them carries one of those two primordial halves. We were born together, albeit from two different vessels, two different fathers, mine mortal, hers divine. But it was apparent from the very start that Helen would bring about my doom, even as she entangled my hair with fresh buds, even as she trod lightly the fertile soil with her dainty sandaled feet, causing our cousins and friends to sigh in awe at her every move.

“Sister, would you join me? I wish to go swimming at the lake.” Her voice was like honeycomb, a soft breeze from the sea. It was nearly impossible for anyone to deny her anything. Clearly, I made a very good exception to this rule. “I'd rather not. Father says we shouldn't go anywhere by ourselves.”

The woods were frolicking with satires and fauns back then, lesser gods were lurking everywhere in the shadows of the undergrowth and any sort of bawdy goat-herder who had grown sick of sheep and serving girls would have gladly taken a shot at us, given the chance. Not to mention the Olympians, whose appetites were as fierce as their rage. I didn't flatter myself by thinking that I could fall victim to any of them. I was cold and spiteful. My face, though not unsightly, was always hard and furrowed. They would scarcely forsake their heavenly glory for the likes of a haughty prude like myself, even if only for the time of a quick coupling in the bushes. But Helen, my sister, she was just the kind of plaything that the immortals would be moving heaven and earth for. I knew I would be the one to be blamed and in all honesty, I didn't wish to take responsibility for the loss of such a treasure, if something befell her in the woods, naked and defenceless as she was.

Though, I must admit, I'd sometimes wish that one unworthy and lewd commoner would take it upon himself to dishonor Helen, rape her, if anything only to humble her. My thoughts were ugly and unsisterly, back then, but many a men would have been spared, had Helen succumbed to such a fate. Part of her beauty was divine, that much is true, but a good portion of it was also derived from her virginity. The innocence of her manners and the pristine purity of her virtue inflamed the hearts of men and gods just as much as the batting of her long eyelashes or the sound of her laughter.

Had she lost her virtue before the war, then maybe... It does no good to dwell on if's and but's, in any case.

“Castor and Polydeuces shall be our escort. They will guard us and no harm will come to us. Wouldn't you like that, brothers?” She turned to the two of them, our brothers, still soiled by mud after an afternoon of fights and games, but glorious and dazzling with youth and daring nevertheless.

They, naturally, obliged her and were already shoving each other aside in hopes to prevail and win a special place at Helen's side.

Witnessing the familiar scene from where I was standing, I felt my guts turn in disgust and rage. “You go without me. I don't feel like swimming today, anyway.”

Castor, my dear twin, looked like he would say something to coax a “yes” out of me, but in the end my sister summoned his attention back to her with a tilt of her pretty golden head, and I was forgotten, left behind without further ado.

We were sixteen back then, all four of us, and I thought I had never hated anyone as I had grown to hate Helen. She never did anything to me, but she attracted my hatred effortlessly, just as she did everyone else's love and lust.

I sat alone in the gardens, struggling to forget about her. It wouldn't be long till Father would find her a handsome young hero to marry anyway, and then I'd be free from her menace forever. I could die a spinster, for all I cared. I'd have all my brothers' attention to myself, and that would be enough.

“Cousin?”

She startled me. She was always so deft and silent, like a needle falling to the ground. Penelope, my uncle Icarius' daughter, was the beloved ward of my father, and was spending the last summer before her wedding with us.

A man named Odysseus had won her hand at a race against her father, who was the fastest man in all of Sparta, and possibly of the entire Peloponnese, and would marry her in a moon-turn from now.

“What is it, Penelope?” She was so dull and modest, my cousin. If Helen outshone everyone else around her, Penelope blended in perfectly with her surroundings. I found her presence comforting and appalling at once. I was always secretly afraid to let myself be around her. What if people would start associating the two of us? We would forever be the two ordinary colourless drabs who couldn't compare to Helen's blinding light. I didn't want to be infected by her dullness.

“I thought you liked swimming.”

And it was true. I loved swimming, and was also pretty good at it. I beat Helen at that one good. She was a very graceful swimmer, but I was faster, and more powerful. Penelope was better than us both at it, though. Her name was very telling in the matter, too. _Duck_.

I was born of a swan's egg myself, and birds of a feather are said to fly together.

“I don't feel like it today.”

“I see.” She sat by me uninvited, and nearly unnoticed. I didn't spot her at my side until she was fully seated. She was called Duck, and she swam as effortlessly as any duck, but she surely didn't have the tiny brain that ducks have. Her true intentions and feelings were always concealed, and her mind constantly in motion. I had learned to beware her perseverance.

“I think I'll miss you when I am gone.”

“You won't. You'll be married, and with a household to run and children to tend to. It is every woman's wish.” I said, not without a hint of venom on my tongue. I desired such fate too, and yet I was forbidden to marry before Helen did. She was always my curse, put there by the gods to number my days according to her whims, to model my future after her own.

“Do you think we will be happy when we are married? Is unhappiness only a thing of youth? Does it get better later?” She knew the answers to all those questions already. She just asked them out loud to me so that it would be even more apparent just how mistaken I was in my beliefs. She didn't sound arrogant or self-assured in her cleverness, either. She spoke in her usual moderate and soft-spoken tone, but it irked me all the same.

“Marriage is only a blessing if it's with the one you want. You're not having second thoughts about marrying the prince of goats, are you?”

Penelope cracked a cryptic smile, too vague and wise for a girl so young, then she stood back to her feet and turned to face the sundown behind us.

“Marriage is never a blessing for us women, dear cousin. Men will always keep the best part of it for themselves, leaving only a cage for us to grow accustomed to, or an eternity of waiting in their wake. But I think you shall find that out at your expense, eventually.”

And so in the end she did sail off to her husband's island, Ithaca, with its frantic coastlines and rocky hills for their beloved goats to roam free. Uncle Icarius was distraught to let her go, and he came to my father for counsel and comfort.

My father, who loved his daughters no less than his brother did his, pitied him and prompted him to erect a delightful statue to the virtue of Aidos, to honour and remember modest Penelope by.

I was strolling by such monument, wondering about what she had said that evening. Why was she accepting her fate with good grace if she was already absolutely positive that only grief awaited in Ithaca?

Aidos covered her face with the sleeve of her peplos like a bashful maiden, so you couldn't see what she was actually scheming under that veil. It was very appropriate for my cousin, though by now, in Odysseus' bed, she would be a maiden no longer.

From the docks, I heard the cheering of Helen, Castor, Polydeuces and at least a dozen boys and girls swarming around them, like bees drawn to the sweet flowers. Their cries were festive, yet muffled in the distance.

 _I wish I could be with them_ , I thought at first, but then I corrected myself. _I wish I could be as far from them as possible._ Back then I thought no husband could inflict upon me a worse humiliation than the one I suffered daily in my father's home at the hands of my sister, who took everything and everyone for herself, leaving nothing but crumbs for the rest of us. But I was very young back then, and sorely mistaken.

*

When we turned seventeen, Father was finally persuaded that the decision couldn't be put off any longer. A husband for Helen had to be found and, as only natural consequence, for me as well.

Tyndareus was very aggrieved to inform us of that fact. I could tell it wasn't his free wish to marry off his favourite daughter just yet. Looking over to my mother, I saw it was her will behind this.

My father, foolish and weak-willed, was never able to deny or gainsay her, as we all well knew.

The Queen and I shared a common distaste for Helen, the beautiful daughter of Zeus. It was only natural for her to dislike her own daughter, after all. In a household that values beauty above all things, Helen was the only rival that could stand a chance against Leda. And to top it all off, Helen was younger, and growing more beautiful by the year.

Though my mother was still handsome and graceful at age thirty-two, she wasn't immortal. Unlike my sister and brother, she didn't have any divinity in her, and it wouldn't be long till her own beauty would fade, and she would no longer be able to compare to Helen either.

“I was freshly turned fifteen when I gave birth to you, and fourteen when I married your father. I fear we have spoiled you far too long. It is past time that you perform your wifely duties in a royal household, and become queens of foreign kingdoms in your own right.”

She didn't say it, but in my head I heard her say foreign _far away_ kingdoms, instead. Helen didn't complain, or object. Did she ever? She just lowered her head in obedience, as we saw Penelope do so many times.

“May I be allowed to visit you and my siblings from time to time, at least?”

It was her only request. She didn't even care to have a say in the matter of choosing her own husband. She would accept any man that our father saw fit to give her. She just asked permission to see us, once we would all be scattered across different countries like marbles on the playground.  
I felt something, like a pang of pain and satisfaction, stir within me when Mother said, “No.”

Helen would leave Sparta for some far-off shore well beyond the coasts of Greece, and I would be free of her. The mere thought made my lips curl up in a twisted smile. I took care to conceal it, since we were still seated around the table, and any joyful display would be easily read as cruelty by both my worshipping father and my heartbroken brothers. I would later in my life develop a real flair for concealment, but by then I wasn't half as convincing as I later grew to be. I realized that Helen had seen right through me with her starry eyes the moment I glanced upon her face across the table. She may be beautiful, vain, and mischievous, but she wasn't dim-witted by far. Her divine father made sure she would also be clever enough to understand the conflicting feelings that she stirred around her.

Her lovely face became stained by outrage and, ever so briefly, I saw her beauty darken and flicker like a dying flame. Beauty is very costly to mantain, I thought. Grief and wrath take away most of it from us over the years. It was only a moment, though, for soon enough her expression went back to what it was before the look of betrayal would dawn on her face. With all the grace of a goddess, she went back to being serene and all-pleasant as ever. She looked like the most beautiful woman in the world, when she tilted her head and said to all of us, even as she was looking right at me, “I shall welcome my fate with open arms and a bare chest. Whatever the gods have in store for me, there is no use trying to escape it, so I shall accept it... as you will.”


	2. μέδομαι

When word spread across the Peloponnese that the king of Sparta had finally decided for his daughter to wed, life in our palace became suddenly hectic. It was like everyone had succumbed to a frenzy. Freshly cooked dishes and delicacies from all around the land were served at every hour of the day and night, to feed the appetites of the countless suitors who had shown up to woo Helen's hand. The very best poets and singers had been summoned from all the corners of the world to provide entertainment for our honoured guests. Handmaidens and servants did not enjoy a moment of respite in days, but they weren't complaining. Just like everyone else taken by that folly, they'd walk to the pits of Hades without so much as a word of complaint, if it were for Helen's sake.

Witnessing how they all tried to outsmart and outdo each other in front of Helen and our father in order to make an impression on either of them was more than I could bear, and yet I bore it, for every moment that passed meant that Helen's final departure from our lives was nearing.

Among them, were the heroes Ajax the Great, Idromeneus son of Deucalion, Menestheus son of Peteos, Antilochus son of Nestor, and clearly, Menelaus of Mycenae.

The latter, though, had been delayed by some more pressing matter, and could not pursue his interests in Tyndareus' palace himself, so he sent his brother, Agamemnon, the eldest son of Atreus, to join the pursuit of Helen's hand on his behalf.

You did not need to be well-read to know whose spawn they both were. The Atreidae were descendants of Tantalus, and their name was soiled with the mark of shame and incest and kin-slaying.

I had only sparingly heard of their ancestors' bloody deeds from my mother's handmaidens, who would gossip just about anyone to keep themselves from working, but they sounded rather terrified by the subject, and thus would promptly change it. The Queen herself did not seem to mind that Tantalus had cut his own son into pieces and fed him to the gods. I could tell that she favoured Menelaus and his brother out of all the suitors, and she said so to us openly many times.

Ever since that savage banquet, the spawn of Tantalus did not know peace. His curse fell down on his descendants like an axe, and no matter what, it always ended in blood for the house of Atreus and those who sided with them.

I looked at her, the beautiful queen Leda, and I marveled at her cruelty, more than her beauty.

She knew it would end in blood for Helen if she married Menelaus. She _hoped_ that it would end in blood.

It was true that I ill-wished Helen from time to time during our girlhood together, but the gore and sheer ruthlessness of my mother's intentions unsettled me. Did my sister truly deserve to share her bed and life with a man whose blood is cursed? Her only fault, as much as it aggrieved me to admit it, was her beauty...

I was having somber musings of this nature in the gardens of the palace when I met Agamemnon for the first time. It was well past midnight, and seeing him emerge from the shadows gave me a fright.

He had a very dark beard, and dark, greedy eyes to match. The hair on his head was brisk and black. I did turn to look in his direction with my lips parted and wide eyes, but I was quick to regain my composure. It was only him, after all, another suitor in the house of my father. His cursed history was nothing to me. After all, I had some pretty blood-chilling tales to share of my own, if he was up for some. And besides, I knew he wouldn't dare laying a finger on me, a princess of Sparta, for it would pretty much ruin his chances to win my sister for his brother.

You see, in this case, Helen was both my nightmare and my safety, and I was at once happy and resentful that I owed her part of my status. My feelings were conflicting, indeed.

In any case, Agamemnon laid his eyes on me that night and would not look away. I wish I could say I saw lust pervade his obscure frown, or adoration. I wish I could say he had been pierced by Eros' golden arrow the moment he saw me, but the truth is he just felt hungry for what his brother would soon have. Menelaus would conquer Helen, the most prized belonging in the whole world. Even the walls had ears in Tyndareus' palace, and he had very likely caught more than a whiff of what my mother had told us over the dinnertable, possibly from one of the servants. It seemed apparent to us all that Menelaus would have Helen, but what about Agamemnon? Was he to sail back to Mycenae empty-handed? Back then, the tale was that both Helen and I had been fathered by Zeus in the shape of a swan, not just her. Whoever recounted such nonsense must have been greatly mistaken, of course, but Agamemnon didn't suspect a thing at the time. He believed I was as divine as my sister, in spite of my ordinary looks. He probably just assumed I must have had some other hidden godly gift, and thus wanted a share of Zeus' potent seed as well.

“You are the king's other daughter.” He said, coldly. I remember wondering if this man had any warmth in him, for he looked to me as bloodless as Hades himself. A man with a bad omen on his head.

I felt a blind, restless rage wind up within me as he spoke those words. The king's _other_ daughter. That was exactly how I'd felt ever since I came into the world, Tyndareus' true spawn, mortal and rough, meek and tarnished.

“The one whose hand can't be won.” I retaliated, out of spite for the way he had addressed me.

Agamemnon son of Atreus cracked a smile, as if he found the scorn in me to his liking.

“If you stayed true to your name, you'd have more wooers than your sister, Clytemnestra of the many suitors.”

When he said my name, I felt a thunderbolt jolt through my ribcage. It was contempt laced with shame. It was unexpected, and uncalled for. He shouldn't have called me by name and then play with its meaning at my expense. His disrespect irked me, made my nostrils flare.

“If you stayed true to your name, you'd think longer and harder than you do before you spoke to me like that.” His name came from the word _medomai_ , a verb, which means to _ponder_ and _agan_ , _very_ _much_. You see, I could be smart when I tried to impress, or when I meant offense. Any other time I preferred to stay quiet, and keep my thoughts to myself. They were seldom pleasant to hear, anyway.

Agamemnon's smile curdled on his hard face like sour milk. My defiance was bordering in insolence now, and thus ceased to be laughable in his eyes.

He drew closer, like a black tomcat in the moonless night. Selene hid her face, and I couldn't make out his features very clearly. Only his eyes shone dinstinctly, covetous for something unknown.

I refused to believe it was me he felt so ravenous for. In hindsight, I finally learned what it was.

He was desperate to break that wild streak in me, the one that comes from untamed girlhood and virginity. The son of Atreus was a conqueror. Like many heroes of our age, he wouldn't be satisfied with a peaceful life, a wife and healthy children to inherit his throne one day. He was no hero, but he had the same restless nature of Odysseus, Achilles, and the whole foolish lot of them. He had to conquer, and once he had conquered, move on to the next conquest, in an endless groove for the rest of his life.

Had I known back then what I later came to learn, I wouldn't have let him move one step closer. I would have fled to my bedchamber, buried my face in my pillow and hoped to forget his stern face and hard voice.

But I did let him closer to me, and he grabbed me by the nape of my neck when he was close enough. I let out a shocked gasp, but it died down my throat when he pressed his thin dry lips to my mouth. I could feel the raspiness of his beard scratch against the skin around my lips, but I did not move. I let his tongue in my mouth, and savoured every second of it. It tasted new, like a bittersweet fruit that had always been out of my grasp. You see, I had never once dreamed of kissing anyone before. I was a princess of Sparta, and though I had a decent amount of suitors, I deemed them all beneath me. Perhaps I had too lofty an opinion of myself, perhaps hubris has always plagued my soul, or perhaps that may simply have been the way I tried to shield my battered pride from the fact that I'd never be as loved and as admired as my sister.

Nobody would ever compete for my hand like they were doing for Helen's, so I elected never to put it up for winning.

He was different though. He was not fooled by beauty like the rest of the men who showed up at the palace. Agamemnon found me a much more alluring prize than Helen, merely because, in my heart, I was harder to conquer even than her, and that challenge inflamed the conqueror in him.

I pushed him away when I'd had enough of the rough taste on his tongue.

As our faces grew apart, I could see that his expression remained unmoved, indifferent to the kiss he had just given me. This was a man of stone, hardened to the pleasures of the world by his ancestors' bloodlust.

I came away, turned on my heels, and left him standing there. I was fleeing from the awful future I saw in his shadowy eyes, a future where I would share the guilt and the shame of the Atreidae. But mostly, I was fleeing from the future I wanted.

As I went back to my bedchamber, flushed and in a rush, I came across Castor. I strolled down the corridor with my eyes set low, careful not to lock gazes with any of the servants, who would undoubtedly report my nightly adventure in the gardens to my father, but my brother saw me first, and stopped me by the shoulders.

“Where are you coming from in such a haste?”

I was always a very stoic and possessed individual, even as a young girl, so my distressed expression would have no doubt sparked the suspicion of anyone who knew me. And Castor did know me. He was the brother I shared the egg with, after all. But I couldn't tell him the truth. I loved him more than anyone, I loved him and Polydeuces equally and deeply, but all the same, I did not trust either of them with what was going on inside me. You see, the one inside me was the real secret I intended to keep at all costs.

The fleeting kiss that I shared with the king of Mycenae in the garden held no importance. My mother had fucked a swan under her husband's roof and gotten away with it. My sister would soon start a war and still not pay for it with her life. I could surely kiss a king in the gardens and expect not to suffer any consequence.

But I would sooner die than let anyone know that Agamemnon's kiss, my first kiss, had started a fire inside my chest, and that I could feel myself burning from head to toe just thinking about doing it again.

“Why, I could ask you the same thing, brother.” I hoped that the sardonic smirk on my face would tone down the reddish hue of my cheeks. Castor, my dear brother, ever so candid, let go of my shoulders and took a step back as if I had stung him.

It was so much like him, to feel shame upon getting caught in the act of mischief. With his eyes down-cast and tight lips, he looked more like a child than like the man he was starting to grow into.

I became amused, and smiled favourably on him. I thought he was just making a huge deal out of something very minor. He was the prince of Sparta, and it didn't matter if he had just climbed down from some serving girl's bed. He could have all the women he wanted, and men too, in fact.

“I could not sleep...” He confessed, under his breath. “I think I must be cursed.”

I snorted in amusement. Only my brothers could make me laugh when I had nothing to be so cheerful about. “Cursed?” I said, in a sort of humorous disbelief, then I took his beautiful face in my hands, like an older sister, like a mother. “You are a prince, and a hero. You have sailed with the bravest of men, the Argonauts, on the very first man-made boat. You fought Theseus in his kingdom to rescue our sister, so very bravely. You have hunted down the Calydonian boar, the great punishment sent by Artemis. And all along, Zeus never deserted Castor the horse breaker, because you are dear to him.”

He looked away, his eyes brimming with tears. “You don't understand, Clytemnestra. You have a pure heart, and I cannot offend your ears with such filth.” His voice was the voice of a man broken.

I kissed his tears and tried to comfort him with my whispers. I could be caring when I wanted.

If he thought I had a pure heart, then perhaps he didn't know me as well as I thought.

“Filth? Our house is overridden with grown men in their prime coming from all of Greece, all waiting to seize Helen's sweet tender body with their paws, and if they can't have her for a wife, they won't go back home until they have enjoyed a night with one of the serving wenches. Some of them won't settle for so little, and even aspire to have me, or you, or Polydeuces. I don't doubt that the most fearless among them would aspire to have our mother while Father watches. I have heard more filth from them in the last two days, than you can think of in a lifetime. So I believe it's safe to unburden yourself with me, brother.”

My brother's temper only grew worse the more I went on with my bold speech, and he eventually snapped. He slapped my caresses away and pinned me down against the corridor's wall with his eyes and hands. “I might be dear to Zeus, but Aphrodite has cursed me. She has doomed me with a passion too terrible to bear, and every day is pain, and every night is hell. I love Helen, and my love is violent, too great, not brotherly at all. I would take her for a wife myself before I let any of these pathetic swines lay a finger on her.”

The shock on my face was apparent, but it soon faded away when Castor let go of me, and crumbled on his knees, right there, at my feet. He wept, and I looked down on him.

A look of icy resigned awareness replaced the surprise on my face. Of course, he had to fall for her. Nobody was exempt. Everyone and everything had to be hers. That night, I went to bed despising Helen a little more than usual.

*

My mother had chosen Menelaus as a husband for her most beautiful daughter, and my father obliged his queen, like he had done all his life. The celebrations for their wedding were to take place in Mycenae, according to the tradition, and thus Helen was preparing to leave her father's home the last time I spoke to her. She was to sail for Mycenae the next day with Agamemnon, the man who would be her brother-in-law. The entire court was in tears, weeping for their beloved princess who was leaving them. Castor and Polydeuces wept quietly in each other's arms, and my heart kept breaking for them. My father paced the entirety of the throne room back and forth like a caged hound, haunted by the hasty choice he had been forced to make. My mother was bathing in her rooms, where she would remain to marvel at her own breath-taking looks for the rest of the night.

“I wish we had more time... to be sisters, you and I.” She lamented, with a hint of melancholy to her soft voice. Her tenderness made me sick to the stomach for I was unable to reciprocate it, no matter how hard I tried. I pitied her, for I knew that great misfortune would await her as Menelaus' wife, and at the same time I felt relieved that I would never have to glance upon her beautiful features again.

“We have had time enough. Our ways must part now.” I observed, matter-of-factly, and untouched by her sentimentality.

She nodded slowly, and folded her dainty hands in her lap. “I know you resent me for something I did, and yet don't fully understand. It was my curse since birth. But you shall always be my sister to me, and if you-”

I cut her off, as I didn't like where it was going, and my patience was wearing thinner with each word from her. “Quit fretting. You are going to wed Menelaus and be queen of his kingdom. And when you are queen, nobody will hate you. And even if they do, it won't matter, because you will have the power to bend people to your will, just like mother bends you and Father today.”

“But-” She looked sorely at loss, my beautiful sister. Her crystal blue eyes were wide and distressed like a hind. “I do not want the power to rule. I just want love.”

I shook my head, hopelessly. “Love is a double-headed ax. It cuts from both ends.”

Looking back on that day, it was as if my older self was speaking through my young, unknowing lips. And besides, those were the very last and kindest words that I ever said to my sister.

The following day, she sailed off our coasts with a dozen of Menelaus' prized triremes as her escort. Her jeweled head was so bright that it was the only thing I could still make out from afar, before the muddy horizon would swallow up that too. I breathed, finally, taking in the air of the palace without her in it.

My eyes were still firmly set on the sealine in anticipation and fear, as I dared not take them off the horizon. Part of me was still wary, loath to trust my own sight. Only when the procession of servants and courtiers, who had gathered on the beach to bid the princess goodbye, began to disperse, did I finally let myself believe that Helen was truly gone. I had been in a state of constant impatient restlessness for the best part of the month, and now my senses were finally at peace. Helen was gone. My sister, my doom, my black mirror, she was gone, and wouldn't ever come back.

I would never see her, nor Agamemnon, again. I shrugged, as it was a small price to pay to be rid of such a pest. I did not grieve for his departure, nor felt utterly miserable without him. But his kiss did awaken something within me. A lust, a hunger for more.

I was young, knew next to nothing of men, or childbirth, or my own body for that matter. I would often lay awake in my undergarments at night, running my hands up and down my body, as my mind kept racing back to that night, to the kiss he should have never given me.

Then I thought of Castor, nurturing a passion too sinful and ghastly for his own sister right before everyone's eyes, and then of my mother, queen Leda, who let a swan spurt his seed in her, even though she was married to a king. I grew enraged and eager at once.

My flesh was blazing, my thoughts hectic and feverish when I rose from the bed, quickly wrapped a fine linen cloth about my bare shoulders, and went out into the clear night of midsummer.

The chirping of the cicadas was a constant noise in the background of my musings. My feet took me to my father's stables without my knowing. Unlike my brothers, I was never a skilled rider, nor harboured any love for horses, so it came as a wonder to me that I had absent-mindedly walked myself there, of all places. I didn't know what I was looking for in a place like that, until I saw him. He was a stable boy, a few years my senior, lanky and sun burnt. On a few occasions, I had caught him in the act of looking at me when he thought I wouldn't notice. I always loathed his impertinence, and at the same time I felt drawn to him by a certain curiosity, the same unspoken curiosity that always took hold of me whenever somebody who also knew my sister, deliberately chose to pay attention to me, instead. Though I would never have admitted to have taken interest in a stable boy, obviously. Well, the time for pretense was over, I decided.

When he saw me, he knew me right away, and promptly averted his gaze. He probably thought I didn't want to be seen, nor disturbed by the likes of him. I was determined to relish his reverence for as long as I could, even though the design of what was going to happen became clearer and clearer in my mind with each step I took.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him, unflinching, fearless, loud and clear, like a woman grown who knows her own place in the world, and not the bewildered green girl that I was.

“I... I sleep here, princess.” He fumbled at his words, stuttering. I rolled my eyes at his clumsiness. I was the junior of the two, a girl and a virgin, yet he looked the more inexperienced.

 _Maybe I should have disguised myself as a kitchen girl_ , I thought. Surely, not all men have the guts to bed a princess. Not all men are such fools to actually mistake me for a kitchen maid, either. Part of me wanted to turn on my heels and leave him where he was, to spend the night with his fetid horses, but something held my feet well planted to the ground.

It was desire, partly, and curiosity, and a wild daring that would not let me back down, not when I went so far as to speak to a common stable boy in my father's service already.

“Do the horses keep you good company?” I tried to smother my sharp tones and abrasive words. If I wanted him to be comfortable around me, I needed to stop reminding him of how beneath me he truly was. I made myself smile, even.

“They do... Your highness. They're better than people, more often than not.” He grinned back, baring his teeth. The night was luminous and starry. The cicadas were still singing in the distance. I feared my nostrils would never adjust to the strong, rough smell of horses.

I knew nothing of how to charm a man back then. I had nothing of my sister's and mother's natural appeal, and yet with this boy I felt as if I didn't need to try. He was bewitched already and I had done nothing more than talk to him.

“Don't you like your life at the palace?” Clearly, I did not care whether life at the palace was to his liking or not, but I asked anyway. I came closer to him, let my eyes widen, so that he could see himself reflected in them and read whatever he wanted in there.

“I do love it here. I... I'd never have met you, if I didn't live here.” He lowered his gaze, unable to withstand mine any longer. I left him standing where he was, and went sitting on a pile of hay stacked up in one corner. I was growing eager for what I had come such a long way for, and had little patience for his pleasantries.

“Come, sit with me. And tell me your name.” I patted the hay beside me, expecting him to fill the place by my side at once. He hesitated for a moment, then did as he was bid.

“My name is Tryphon, and I am your humble servant.” He declared, resting a hand over his heart.

I could tell he was struggling to sound chivalrous, like the heroes who pledged themselves to their queen's service. In truth, he just sounded strained and hard-pressed, but I pretended not to notice.

“I can think of a way for you to serve me right away, Tryphon.” I took him on, all smiles and chuckles. He squinted, ready and alert, then swallowed a lump in his throat. “Anything, my lady.”

I put a hand against his chest, curious to feel its consistency under my fingers. It was less broad than Agamemnon's, but warm, and I could feel his heart beating right through it.

“As you well know, my sister Helen was wedded off just last week and it is very likely that the king and queen mean for me to marry just as hastily.” I lied. Father and Mother did not concern themselves with the prospect of my own marriage. I certainly did not constitute a threat to my mother's beauty, so she did not mind my being around her. I could die a spinster in her train for all she cared. And my dull, oaf of a father was still too grief-stricken over the loss of his beautiful swan daughter, to even think of brokering a new marriage for the other one, the mortal one.

But Tryphon didn't need to know any of that. “So a thought has been troubling me... What if I come by my husband's bed a clumsy, silly girl, inexperienced and clueless? I couldn't bear making a fool of myself like that. I need a teacher, a good teacher, who would take it upon himself to make sure I went to my husband's bed well prepared and ready to perform my wifely duties.”

His lips parted, a look of disbelief dawned on his face. I could sense two opposite forces duelling for dominance within his soul. It wasn't too different from what was happening inside of me, either.

I half feared that he would try to talk some sense into me, but he didn't. He just kissed me full on the mouth, and let his hands roam free under my loose underclothing. I didn't fathom a man could know such hunger. Agamemnon had kissed me, yes, but he remained cold and steady all through it.

Tryphon lost himself in the kiss we shared, and touched me as if his very life depended on it.

I was nervous and could feel my stomach churning on itself, but summoned all my courage back to me. I had wanted it, after all, and it was too late for regrets now.

He kissed my face, my neck, and my breasts, and I felt my skin burn where his lips touched it. I tried not to let my hands remain idle, but could find little for them to do in my cluelesness.

The frenzied kissing, pulling and humping soon came to a halt, when he became too impatient. I would gladly have had more of it, as I did not feel ready at all for what came next.

He looked me in the eye as he pulled up his tunic of rough fabric. His manhood was stiff, wet and hot against my thighs. I felt a pang of excitement and regret laced together when he entered me. It hurt, and I gasped out of surprise, rather than pain, because I didn't expect it to hurt at all.

It didn't feel like any pain I had previously suffered either, and it took me a while to adjust to it. Tryphon grunted and panted in my ear and hair, as he thrust deeper in me. The hay began to prickle and scratch my skin but I remained unaware of it for the entire duration of the coupling.

I felt like a beast while I laid beneath him, taking his thrusts between my thighs, dirty and debased, but free and wild, and I wondered if Helen had gone through the same sensation in Menelaus' bed.

Though it did not feel as pleasant as I'd anticipated, it quenched the hunger that would not let me rest, and I ended up visiting the stables twice or thrice more in the following moon-turn, when the palace was asleep.

Then one day, when summer was just beginning to turn into fall, Agamemnon son of Atreus came back to our shores. We all thought he brought news of Helen, perhaps ill news from her new home, but it was nothing of the sort. He had come to ask for my hand.


	3. γάμος

“A king... asking for Clytemnestra's hand?” The blatant disbelief in Polydeuces' voice ought to have offended me, but I did not let it irk me. I wanted no quarrels with him, nor with Castor, not when I was going to leave them so soon.

Queen Leda seemed amused by her son's question, but her smiling eyes turned serious and still again when she rested them on me. She looked as if she would weigh the actual worth of me with her judging prying gaze. An evaluation was dancing on her rosy lips, and I had no doubt that she would mercilessly voice it, if only King Tyndareus hadn't spoken first.

“If there is anybody in this kingdom of mine worthy of being a queen, it is my daughter Clytemnestra. Of course a mighty king like Agamemnon would want her for himself.”

Laughter and flattery had always come easily to my father's mouth, but I hadn't seen him laugh ever since Helen had left us, and furthermore, he seemed to mean those words of praise more than ever now. My mother raised her eyebrows in a sort of skeptical mocking, but she knew better than to openly admit to it, and rather waited for her husband to carry on with the point he was trying to make.

“But I don't have it in me to send the last of my daughters away to a foreign land, now. Not after Helen...” His voice broke off abruptly, a beacon of tears lingering in his throat.

His wife pursed her lips together, clicking her tongue petulantly. “Pull yourself together, husband. You are fretting like a woman. Besides,” she turned to me, then. “Clytemnestra is nearly ten-and-eight. She doesn't have my beauty, and marrying her off might be harder than it was for Helen. She might as well end up dying an old spinster in our palace at this rate. And we do not want to risk angering a mighty king like the son of Atreus by denying him her hand out of the sheer weakness of her father's heart, do we? He's more than she deserves, anyway. I can't fathom whatever possessed him to ask for her hand of all the women of Greece, but we should seize the opportunity before he realizes what a little silver-tongued shrew she can be.”

You see, dear reader, if I've ever been worthy of being called a silver-tongued shrew, then you may very well guess whom I take it from. That night, my father raised his voice at my mother for the first time ever since I was alive.

“Peace, woman! You speak of your daughter with such unmotherly disdain, as if she isn't even your blood. But she is, and my own as well, more than Helen ever was.” Tyndareus roared, and we all fell in a silent stupor. He had never held his wife's betrayal against her, not once in all those years. It was as if his dormant rage had finally been breathed back to life by the anguish he was suffering.

Leda did not speak, she just gathered her skirts about her, and went out of the hall, followed by a train of shocked fussy handmaidens. My prideful satisfaction was palpable in the air, but I did not presume to remark on it. I just looked at my father and my brothers, seemingly for the first or last time. The thought of leaving them pained me, but staying as the unwed daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, while my sister would rule her own household, and my formidable brothers would live on to become great heroes of our age, was something I simply could not accept.

Back in my time, there weren't many things that a woman could be or do with her life. We all had to marry, sooner or later, or end up sworn to the cult of some goddess that required virginity from her priestesses, and, even as a young woman of eighteen, I already knew that I hadn't been cut for a life of seclusion and abstinence. Marriage may have been a trial of its own, like my cousin Penelope warned me, so long ago, but it was a trial I was willing to undertake, and the lesser of the evils in my situation. I said so to my father that night, and though he wept, he also understood.

In the end he kissed me goodbye on the same beach where we saw Helen last, and let me sail off to wed Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae. My mother did not even bother kissing me. She just looked down on us from the high balcony of the palace, the same where I stood the day my sister left. I saw her algid, graceful figure in the distance and regretted not being able to be there when her proverbial beauty would begin to wither away. That would have been a sight to see, indeed.

My brothers stood on the beach too, one on each side of our father. They weren't weeping like they did on the day Helen sailed off, but it didn't matter. I knew I would miss their candid honesty and childish recklessness when I'd be gone.

But there, on the docks I saw another face. It was sun burnt, red, and lost. It was the stable boy. I thought I could glimpse a tear roll down his cheek as the boat took to the open sea, and drifted further away from the shore. I didn't even think of going to him for a last kiss the night before. Nothing that had happened between us could be acknowledged or even remembered in the light of day. I was leaving girlhood behind, and moving on to the next threshold of my life as swiftly as the wind would carry our sails.

It felt odd, forceful, and yet necessary. I was happy with myself, and my newly found authority as the king's wife, yet still mournful for the things and the people that I had to shed off like some old tight skin. That was the day I learned that there is always going to be a conspicuous amount of mourning in growth.

*

I dreaded my first night as a wedded woman. I was frightened half to death that Agamemnon would realize that my maidenhead had been long spoken for already, so when he led me to his bed after the feast, I felt my stomach churn, and I lied, blaming the seasickness for it, even though the sea had been as flat as a board. I hadn't been wedded a day, and already began to weave deceit.

“I won't rush you.” He said, laying me down in bed like a doll. “I would rather talk to you before I bed you, anyway.”

I felt my eyes widen on my face, unable to believe my own ears. He didn't strike me as the type of man who spoke much, especially not with his women.

“What is there to say, my lord?” I asked, tentatively, and out of breath. The air inside the room was thick with woodsmoke. I was also grateful for the freshly kindled fire, though, for it could get pretty cold at sea during that season.

“You truly don't know, do you? Aren't you surprised in the slightest that I came back for you?” He asked in a low growling sound. He wasn't even looking at me. His listless glance was lost in the fire, or somewhere beyond even it. The red flames danced on his square face, playing with the shadows under his eyes, nose and chin. “The first time we spoke you struck me as smarter than this, Clytemnestra.”

“I am sorry to disappoint, my lord. I may, all in all, have led you on.” My fear and adoration for his handsome face subdued a bit, as my life-long characteristic arrogance resurfaced, as a consequence of his scornful prompt.

“You are unlike any woman I've ever met. And trust me, I've met many such.”

I looked at him, with a clueless look in my eyes. I could feel there was more that he wanted to say and yet hadn't yet said. “I haven't married you for love or for your virtue. But if you are as clever as I think, you'd know that already.”

I must confess I was taken aback by his bluntness. So he was aware of my soiled virtue. My mistake with Agamemnon, at first, was underestimating his understanding of my mind.

I was only a girl, after all, with no knowledge of the world and its horrors, and he was a man grown already, battle-hardened, the direct descendant of those who conquered the Peloponnese back when the royal household of Sparta was still obscure.

I felt silly, there, in bed with him, still clothed, as I let him tell me exactly what I should or should not know. “Why did you, then?” Hard-pressed not to sound too dense, I made myself ask, begrudgingly. “I am sure you could have had any princess or maiden in the world, far more clever and beautiful than I could ever be. My sister, for one. There is no woman in the world more beautiful than her, and I could certainly vouch for her intact virtue, had you asked me. But you let your younger brother have her, and claimed her corrupted half-sister instead.  _The king's other daughter_ , as you dubbed me that night. Why?”

By then, I was furious. The rage built up inside me like a forest fire, as it always did when I found myself weaving the praise of Helen, in spite of my own wounded pride.

The King of Mycenae smiled favourably on me, and in the trembling half-shadows of the fire-lit room, I almost saw my father's benevolent brow staring back at me from his side of the bed. I would have given anything to slap that smile off his jaw, and I reckon that he must have read that too on my own face.

“This is exactly why.” He pointed at me with his eyes and chin, keeping his big hands folded in his lap. “You have this ... _wrath_ , Clytemnestra. You have known true shame, and hatred, and anger even as a high-born girl of only eighteen. And I knew from the very moment I saw you in Tyndareus' palace. You don't know me yet, but you'll learn to in due time, and you'll see that you are my match in every thing. Surely, Helen is beautiful and virtuous and obliging, but...”

That was more than I cared to hear from my darling husband, so I turned away from him bitterly, and huddled myself beneath the coverlet as I would for sleep.

“And you let such a jewel go to your little brother? You must love him very much.”

Agamemnon drew me to him, tilted my head up with a forefinger, forcing our gazes to meet. He feigned complete ignorance to the spite and the hurt in my voice.

“I owe Menelaus my very kingdom. He helped me win back my birthright from my uncle Thyestes and his deceitful son. Not even a woman such as your sister could come between me and my brother, not after what he did for me. But now hush, wife, we've had enough talking for a wedding's night.”

I resisted at first, stiff against his obstinate lewd caresses, but I could not deny that I wanted him for long, so after a while of him trying to shut me up with his raw kisses, I relented, and let him strip me naked. He relished the sight of me in the dim half-lights like a hungry tomcat, then climbed on top of me with his heavy, muscled body. His love-making was harsher than Tryphon's, and even as I could feel my limbs hurting under the potency of his thrusts, I could tell that he was still holding back some of his rough insticts for my sake.

I knew I ought to be afraid, when he took me by my neck and bit into it voraciously, nearly drawing blood. I would carry the red crescent-shaped marks for weeks thereafter, albeit I took care of conceiling them with head scarves and veils. And yet I was not afraid. I was fascinated, bewitched by his black blood, and ended up straddling him and riding him on the edge of the bed, until he released his seed inside my womb, and collapsed between my thighs, soon after.

I woke up the following morning, bewildered and at loss. I expected to see my room's familiar surroundings, and I couldn't place where I was for the numb endless moments following my awakening. Then the memories of the night before came rushing back to my mind like a summer shower, and I realized that I was still in the royal cabin of Agamemnon's trireme.

Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, was now my husband. Except he was nowhere to be seen. Either I had dreamed the whole thing, in my overly excited reveries as a longing young lady, or he was simply a morning person. I looked at my own distorted reflection in the opalescent silver surface in front of the bed. My hair was in great disarray, still sleep-tousled from the night before, but I smiled back at the mirror. I liked the woman whom I glimpsed in there; she was proud, unapologetic, consequential, and most importantly, free. She may not be as beautiful as Helen, but she was so much more powerful.

Well, I couldn't have been more mistaken. As he himself had told me, I didn't know the son of Atreus just yet. I was still totally oblivious to the rabid, deranged folk I was meddling with.

Two days later, we arrived to Mycenae, in Argolis. I was happy to be finally there, as I was starting to loathe the sailing and the lack of my personal belongings and handmaidens.

Even though Agamemnon made sure I had anything I needed for a comfortable voyage, it still wasn't enough by far as there was an appalling shortage of women on board, since we were viewed as a harbringer of misfortune by the crew members.

The royal palace of Mycenae was nothing short of a treasure cove. Even as the daughter of a king, the richness and sheer opulence of the white marbles and the gilded decorations in the throne room made such an impression on me that Agamemnon made mock of it.

“I had no idea it was so easy to impress the daughter of a king.” He observed, endearingly. By the way his eyes smiled, I could tell he was pleased, and something within me went soft at the sight of him. Back then, I had not yet been instructed to the price he had to pay in order to have all that wealth at his disposal, and half of southern Greece at his behest.

I had imagined from the very first moment I saw him that he was a conqueror at heart, born of kinslaying and adultery, with an engrained thirst for bloodshed and disaster, but right then, right there, I had been utterly blinded by the lavish riches around me, and besides, I was driven half-crazed by the lust of him. All I could think of was when I would get to have him alone again.

Even as he paraded me in front of the court as his queen, commanding his slaves to show me the same deference they'd show him, I could feel my skin burn underneath my purple matronal peplos at the mere thought of us in bed together.

I thought, in my boundless girlish foolishness, that I would be able to rule his fiery temperament, keep it on a leash. I dreamed that we would be happy together, only live off each other for the rest of our long lives, have many children together, and then watch them grow up. Once again, I couldn't be more mistaken.

Then he introduced me to my new retinue of handmaidens, kissed me quickly on the brow and left to meet with his generals, leaving me to pine for him for the rest of the evening.

Even in those early days, a dozen years before the war would start, he was already thinking of it, pondering it, making preparations for it.

He was always preparing for some war. Not the great one yet, maybe, but other minor wars that he'd always win with a god-like ease. I took to calling him my Ares, whenever he could make time to spend the night with me, in between campaigns.

He smiled at the blasphemous sound of it, at first, then began to brush it off and roll on his side of the bed to sleep as soon as he had spilled himself in me. I waited, and prayed to Hera of the white arm to grant me my wish every morning, at the temple on the summit of the citadel.

I was still relatively devout back then, and would never go to the temple without an offering for the deity. Several months went by in that twisted, wishful groove, so much that I was beginning to despair of ever seeing my prayers heard by the queen of the gods. After all, why would she bother with me?

I was the mortal daughter of the woman who slept with her husband and birthed him divine twins.

Even though I hadn't been fathered by Zeus himself, there was little doubt that I carried Leda's adulterous blood in my veins, and Hera had no sympathy for adulterers.

Until I started to miss my monthly course. It was just a hunch at first, but before the new moon, I had the utmost certainty that I was, in fact, with child. I tried hard to keep it a secret from my handmaidens, for they would certainly report to my husband before I would even have the chance to do so myself.

One night, in bed, before he would even lay a finger on me, I told him. “I have good cause to think that I am with child.”

The ghost of lust fell from his face, as a new, strange light came to replace it. He laughed, delighted, and grasped me by my hips, placing small kisses in between them. “A boy, a son for the house of Atreus.” Then he looked up to me, his benevolent smile, the one I'd craved all those months, still curving his lips upward.

“You did good, my love.”

He made love to me more gently that night, and all the nights that followed. He would host feasts in my honour every evening, feed me the most refined delicacies from his very hand, and he even took a respite from the war campaigns. “The conquest of Greece can wait for my wife to deliver my son”, he would say, smiling in my direction. His eyes would never stray from mine for too long, and every day I felt ecstatic because he was finally wholly mine, like he'd never been before.

As I watched him sleep peacefully at my side, four months into my time already, a memory of Penelope rose back to my mind. I had to stifle down a chuckle, careful not to wake Agamemnon.

“See? You were wrong, cousin. Marriage can be a blessing, after all.” I whispered to the quiet darkness in the room, perfectly and ignorantly blissful as I was.


End file.
